


Episode 581: The Hunters

by Project0506



Series: And now, the Weather [1]
Category: Supernatural, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 12:43:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4180278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tonight, Listeners, we tell a story about two brothers sitting in the front seat of a well maintained, black 1967 Chevrolet Impala, faces washed in foreboding red and white by the blinking sign of the Arby's."</p>
<p>In which Castiel is the Voice of Night Vale but also probably doesn't exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Episode 581: The Hunters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SniperinaJumper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SniperinaJumper/gifts).



The wind is hot. The night is bright. And flecks of dark blood lurk along the edges of a long desert road. Welcome to Night Vale.

 

Tonight, Listeners, we tell a story about two men. Two brothers. Two brothers sitting in the front seat of a well maintained, black 1967 Chevrolet Impala, faces washed in foreboding red and white by the blinking sign of the Arby's. Slowly, as if on cue, they turn shocked, perhaps slightly fearful, faces towards the radio.

 

It should be said that this is also a story about justice, a favored topic of my brother Gabriel. Gabriel, as my more avid listeners might remember, is an angel. Except not, because angels do not officially exist. Neither is he my brother, because I, as well, do not officially exist. Also angels are created (not begotten) multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent and, thus, familial linkage as a very mortal construct may not technically apply. It is possible that Gabriel and I aren't _actually_ related at all. It is something to remember, come his next birthday.

 

I mention Gabriel because one of the brothers, now roaming suspiciously about the vehicle and peering vainly into the coming twilight in hopes of catching glimpse of whatever he believes to be watching, is quite large. Very large, to be perfectly honest. Almost unnaturally so. I have my concerns about what he must have been fed as a child to have grown into such an irrationally massive adult male. My brother, in contrast, is rather short during those periods when he is, at least passingly, humanoid.

 

What do these two facts have to do with each other? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything.

 

The night is yet very young.

 

The Chevrolet Impala was significantly redesigned in 1965, ushering in the so-called 'fourth generation' of the car line. Models included a sports coupe, a convertible, and a frankly ill-received Caprice Custom (which, as many may recall, was replaced by the Impala Caprice only a year later). The Chevrolet Impala that has captured our attentions tonight is a classic 4 door, hard top with almost all authentic parts. There is one rear passenger door that might perhaps have been salvaged from a decrepit 1964 Impala SS, but if so the car's owner certainly isn't saying.

 

I admit, dear listeners, that I have put off speaking of the second brother, the aforementioned car owner, simply to give myself time to gather my thoughts. How do I describe this brother? I can give you the facts. He is the elder, though shorter, of the pair. He has something of a predilection for plaid, leather and strategic layers. He is, like all strangers in our tiny burg, very, very dangerous.

 

But to leave the description there would be to do the brother a great disservice. It would not, for example, tell you anything about the way his eyes soften whenever the younger brother misses a dab of salad dressing on his chin. It would tell you nothing about the way his freckles span his nose like vast constellations or the way they shine incandescent under a pale pink blush. It wouldn't describe how his face flickers, red to white, with the flashing lights of the Arby's enhanced by uncertainty. Should he be angry? Embarrassed? The Voice on the radio speaks as if it sees him, _knows_ him and perhaps it might. The older brother has met more than his fair share of things that can read his mind, after all, and it is rarely anything that one of his many, many knives and guns cannot discourage. And if that fails, there is a vial of aqua sanctus wrapped carefully in gauze and stowed in the side pocket of a duffle bag in the trunk. The older brother retrieves this bag, and a short barrelled shotgun. Just in case. He flips the strap of the former over one shoulder and tucks the butt of the latter under one arm, face set in tense resolve.

 

His hair is a glorious example of the perfection of My Father's creation. More on this later.

 

The deceptively casual way the older brother totes his trusted shotgun reminds me of attempts by our local chapter of the NRA to educate the general public about gun safety. Guns, they maintain, are quite safe. The safest. You're never safer than when you have yourself a gun. They should be given to children as early as possible to facilitate deep, spiritual bonding.

 

I remember when I had my first gun. It was just after I had, well, I'm told not to say Fallen. Gabriel prefers 'sauntered casually towards the cool kids table' but I've learned not to repeat quite a bit of what he says. Regardless it was at a point in my life when I tired of the vast wonder of the unimaginable cosmos and chose to compress my celestial being from a giant-planetary scale into the shell of a five-foot-nine man named Jimmy. It was a particularly tight fit, and the same vague sort of unpleasant as oozing into brand new jeans the evening after Thanksgiving dinner that had fit you perfectly the evening before. But just as with multiple washings and a bit of exercise those jeans eventually sit comfortably, so too will an invigorating dip in a flooded fumarole and a brisk jog along the beaches of the North Sentinel Islands do wonders for making one feel quite at home in rented skin.

 

I'm afraid I've quite lost my original thought. Oh, guns.

 

I broke my wrist the first time I fired one. And my collar bone. And I completely seared away all but one of the fingerprints on my left hand. I had had the strangest notion of invincibility the first time my hand closed around the barrel of a salvaged, refurbished Kimber Custom and had, laughably, flung myself headfirst into the battle for the immortal souls of Night Vale residents that takes place nightly at 8 above the Ice Cream parlor. I fired at the first distinctly menacing creature that descended upon my throat and the recoil threw me clear off the roof. I flapped my wings, quite forgetting I no longer had them, and apparently Enochian expletives sound a bit like a startled puppy in freefall. They had to pause all activities long enough for Gabriel to stop laughing and take me home. It was, coincidentally, my first brush with abject humiliation.

 

Please be responsible. Teach your children how to properly utilize firearms to execute denizens of Purgatory. You wouldn't want all the _other_ children to make fun of them. I'm told that small children are quite beastly in this manner.

 

My story had the intended effect. Perhaps you had thought that I was simply reminiscing for the sake nostalgia. Perhaps you assumed I was waxing Aesopian, weaving a tale to end wrapped around a heavy-handed moral in a clear case of lazy authoring. But no, my tale was meant to be a connection. I've been informed that sharing embarrassing anecdotes about one's younger, more foolish days helps to make one's self seem more human. Relatable. Break the ice, so to speak. It certainly served to put my only-just-larger-than-average-sized, dark-brown-haired hunter a bit more at ease.

 

And now he is tense again. Perhaps he's simply shy. It is, in it's way, kind of cute.

 

He begins to hiss invective against the Voice's person and casts disparagement upon It's origins. The taller brother hisses 'Dean' in an ill-conceived effort to warn his brother against angering beings they cannot sense.

 

Dean. His name is Dean. It's suiting. Quite like his artfully messy, perfect hair.

 

Dean is now far more annoyed with the taller brother than the Voice on the radio. It is a status quo that I, for one, am certainly in favor of.

 

Dean and his ungainly sibling breezed into town earlier today, fresh on the trail of whatever it is that is raiding cul-de-sacs and leaving the remains of it's victims just outside of dumpsters, clearly signaling that it  _could_ have made use of the proper trash receptacles and had, for some reason no doubt derived from the anarchist movement of the late 1960s to the early 1970s, decided not. This sort of appalling behavior is most certainly not tolerated in Night Vale and I myself might have a salt round or two for the hooligan stirring up such strife in our quiet community. The brothers seem to agree.

 

The mountainous brother has done research, stooping even to  _reading_ _books_ , and has determined they are most likely hunting some form of animal shifter. Dean, pure, sensible Dean untainted by the danger that is the written word (an activity I'd like to take a moment to remind you, Listeners, is still very much illegal) believes instead that they are dealing with a witch, or coven of witches, and that the extensive damage to the corpses is hide the fact that human viscera has been taken for use in rituals. They are both very, very wrong, and will find this out shortly. Regardless, they both advance with the grim determination that they will not be leaving until the perpetrator is stopped.

 

Listeners, I'm afraid it's very a bad night to be eating housewives.

 

And now, the weather.

 


End file.
